THE FRENCH IN MADAGASCAR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3605, 31 January 1883, Page 4

THE FRENCH IN MADAGASCAR.

[From the London Spectator of Oct. 21.]

Tlic French Government have evidently determined to occupy the time during which they are paralysed in Europe in carrying , out a policy of colonial expansion. It is, too, a well-considered and, from their point of view, tin able one. They have revived the old policy of the Monarchy, and instead of establishing colonies in the Eug-

lish sense, •which, with their stationary population, they do not want and cannot till, are .seeking , to acquire populated dependencies, which will pay at once, and yield abundantly the semi-tropical produce after which French economists always hanker. They have a notion that India, and not North England, is the source of the British wealth. It i.s a commercial marine, too, as much as a colonial empire, which the colonial division of the French Admiralty is seeking to build up. __ The Government is aware that the French peasantry, though bitterly opposed to any enterprise -which can produce European -war, either do not dislike or do not notice the acquisition of distant dependencies ; and besides seizing Tunis—an act which, OAving to the disgraceful mismanagement of the hospitals, irritated the voters—they have ordered expeditions against Tonquin on such a scale that the wakeful Chinese Cabinet has began to watch them in an ominous way, and an official denial as to the arrival of remonstrances from Pekin has been published in Paris ; have despatched a staff of engineers, guarded by soldiers, to lay down a railway from Senegal to the Niger; have annexed Tahiti, which was only protected lief ore ; have, it is reported, opened and failed in negotiation for the purchase of the Philippines ; have listened favorably to a project for acquiring the Valley of the Congo ; and arc now intent on commencing a conquest of Madagascar. They have nibbled at this plan for 200 years, and now they not only appear to be in earnest, but they have devised a scheme which, if immoral, is decidedly clever, and which unites the maximum of chance with the minimum of draft upon the military resources of France. To conquer Madagascar cheaply it is necessary to have the aid of a native people who can fight, who have no hope of conquering- the island for themselves, and who have a permanent grievance against the Tlovas, the dominant race, who occupy tlie lofty and healthy plateaus of the centre, within and above the marshy coastline and its belt of deadly forest. There is such a people in slad.aga.scar, the Sakalavas, who claim, and more or less hold, the whole north-west of the island ; who, like their rivals, the Tlovas, are of Malay extraction, and speak a dialect of that tongue, but who, probably from some remote cross in the blood, are bigger, braver, and wilder men than their more civilised rivals. The accounts of their number differ, but that patient and wellinformed statist, Dr. Mullens, who .surveyed part of the island and traversed three-fourths of it, and who had unrivalled experience in the stud}' of half-civilised statistics, rejected the popular accounts as foolish, and estimated the whole population of Madagascar at 2,100,000, of whom the Sakalavas make .100,000. If that estimate is correct, the Sakalavas can produce 100,000 fighting men. The Ilovas dread them for their valor; while the Sakalavas, though unable to conquer the plateaus, or" wholly to resist their better organised adversaries, despise the Ilovas individually, and call them by a whimsical nickname compounded of dogs and pigs. These people, who are, of course, thoroughly acclimatised, the French have gained over by promises of protection, and with a. little drill, 100,000 chassepots, some mule batteries, and .1000 men, they can if they please conquer Madagascar. It would be a magniiicent possession. It is nearly as large as France—the precise size arrived at by Dr. Mullens and Mr Sibree, from a comparison of many maps and journeys, being an average of 81.1 by 2.10, or a superficial*area of 203,750 square miles — it is, excluding the malarious forest belt, quite healthy, it will grow anything, from wheat to pine apples ; it is as rich in fine -woods as Honduras, and there is geological reason to believe that it is full of minerals, besides the iron in which it is known to be rich, and -which the Ilovas work. The thin population could be reinforced, both from Pondicherry and Saigon, and the island could, under wise management, be turned into a smaller India.

That this is the plan devised, and at least partly adopted in Paris, is evident from the semi-official statement that M. Grevy will refuse to receive the Hova Envoys unless they acknowledge from the beginning that the Sakalavas are independent of the Hova Queen, and that the French possess an exclusive and legal protectorate, either of the Sakalava territory or—a still more dangerous claim—of all the Sakalava tribe. The envoys cannot make the latter concession, which would girdle the Hova possessions with protected enemies, and will not make the former : and whether they do or not, will make no difference. If they accept the ten us, France reigns in Sakalava territory, and will conquer from thence ; and if they reject them, France will land troops in that territory, which the Ilovas cannot defend from their plateaus, and then declare the Sakalavas independent of all but herself. If France means ecuquest, the negotiation is a farce; and we regret to believe she does mean it. We say we regret, because she will spend a great deal of energy for a very doubtful result, because the French do not manage their tropical possessions in a vivifying manner —they over-govern to an absurd degree, and though not naturally cruel to the obedient, destroy the disobedient with too little scruple—and because the Ilovas have a considerable interest for humanity, They are not such nice people as Mr Ellis painted them, being extremely cruel and oppressive : but they are energetic, teachable, and accumulative, and possess an autochthonous civilisation which has advanced with a certain steadiness for 500 years. They have built cities, though only of wood, they have displayed a,readiness to adopt Christianity ; and though all the Malagasy retain the African curse, the tribal form of government, the Ilovas have for two centuries shown a capacity to rise to the Asiatic form—a. despotism supported by an army and by ;i regular administration, but tempered by popular feeling , . Their admirers believed that this might be improved into the European form, and at all events the Ilovas have codified their laws : and the missionaries, who know them best, say they will adhere to treaties. It seems a pity that an indigenous and advancing, though low civilisation should be broken up by violence, as it will be if the French persist in their design : and that the only branch of the Polynesian Malays with

"go" in them should be subjugated, for no reason except that France -wants to increase her sugar-producing empire. The ilovas are not as tameless as the Arabs, but they will not take kindly to planter administration.

When however, we are asked, as the Standard asks us, and as the missionary world in a week or two will be asking us, Avith one mouth, to prohibit the French enterprise, we must hesitafe to answer in the affirmative. It hardly lies in our mouths to declare that the subjugation of the African Maoris is in itself an unendurable injury to the world. The Ilovas are not in themselves a feeble people, but a strong one, and though their best " generals, Forest and Fever," will not help them against their new opponents, Sakalavas disciplined by French officers, they are sure to make such a light of it as to obtain good terms. As to the feebleness or unfairness of the pretexts used by the French Consuls, that does not rest on English conscience, Aye having, as a Avhole, behaved avcll in Madagascar, while the talk about our "'interests" and Protestant hopes and Jesuit intrigues is talk merely. We cannot go to Avar to secure Protestant missions against Catholic rivalry, and the French will not prosecute Protestants as such. Those who believe that the Republican Government of Franco is going to conquer Madagascar for Jesuit benefit, have a faith which, if it cannot remove mountains, can at least remove facts out of the Avay, and as to our interests, our interest is not to give France a sense of being throttled by Great Britian in all directions. The English people are not going to annex Madagascar, and it is not their business to protect the Malagasy against an im-asiou Avhich Avill possibly fail, and Avliich, if it succeeds, is certainly no Avorscthan the French conquest of Cambodia. We might as avcll be asked to intervene on behalf of the Tonquincse, or those tribes of the Congo for avliosc subjugation M. do Brazza is so anxiously pleading Avith Paris. As to the cry that the French in Madagascar Avill endanger our alternative route to India, avo arc sick of the route. The French can "endanger our route a great deal better from Marseilles ; and avc cannot defend the whole world, because at some future time, under - some undefined circumstances, it may bo more difficult for British ships to reach Calcutta. It Avould be easier to monopolise the ocean at once. Madagascar is three hundred miles from the nearest African coast, a channel surely Avidc enough for anybody, Avhilo on the eastern side there is the Avide Avatcr of the South Pacific. English statesmen cannot forfeit an alliance, essen-

tial to the good order of the world for such visionary dreams, nor even to protect the independence of a Malay race whose progress towards civilisation they have watched with interest. They may regret as we do most heartily, that French statesmen should have fixed their eyes on Madagascar; but they can do no more without endangering interests far more important than the right of Queen Ranavalona to be rid of the counsel of a French resident. There is something after all, though wo may not like it, in the French and Portugese argument that they only conquer the half-civilised, because the British have already conquered all the savage races in the world. There is no more room for anybody, because of the British flag; and the less we needlessly obtrude that fact upon mankind, the better for our peace.